In many emergency situations, it is critical for a patient to receive prompt and proper attention to his/her injuries in order to avoid exacerbating injuries which have already occurred. Often, the first rescuers to arrive on the scene are emergency medical staff who are responsible for preparing the patient for transportation to the nearest medical facility where the individual's injuries can be treated. Depending upon the particular circumstances surrounding the patient's injuries and the location of an accident scene, these rescuers are typically emergency medical squads who are employed with either a fire department, a local hospital, a law enforcement agency, rescue patrols and the like. In most situations, the patient is transported to the most appropriate medical facility by a ground ambulance, but air ambulances are also employed when circumstances dictate that this would be most efficient.
One of the many concerns of certified rescue workers during their preliminary treatment of a patient is to provide, to the extent possible, the most comfortable surroundings for the individual. This can both place the patient at ease and can be vital to the success or failure of initial medical treatment, particularly in instances where weather conditions are severe or where the patient is in shock. For instance, rescues which take place in cold or wet weather conditions, such as those often encountered by ski patrols, require that the patient be adequately insulated from the cold to avoid further reduction in body temperature, while rescues occurring in windy or rainy climates require that the patient be covered with a material which is repellant to these elements. Therefore, it is vital that the emergency rescue personnel be adequately equipped so that they can quickly and properly adapt to the specific situation at hand.
In the past, it was not uncommon for patients to be strapped onto a gurney and provided with little more than a protective pad or ordinary blanket coverings during transportation to a medical facility. Not surprisingly, such accommodations did little to help improve the patient's condition. Moreover, such an approach was cumbersome and did little to provide adequate protection from the elements. Accordingly, efforts were made by manufacturers to provide a more compact and durable protective blanket which was able to provide all-season comfort and protection to a patient. Products which exist today are typically in the form of insulated sleeping bags which are designed to stabilize the patient's body temperature.
While these techniques are adequate for adapting to some of the situations which may arise during the preliminary stages of a rescue, they are limited in their application. Most notably, these approaches are limited in their versatility because it is cumbersome for the rescue workers to efficiently arrange the bedding systems to provide a stable environment for the patient in all types of prevailing environmental conditions.
For example, when conditions are extremely cold these bedding systems, in and of themselves, would likely not provide sufficient insulation to the patient. The potentially disastrous consequence could be a drop in body temperature resulting in a complication to existing injuries or an otherwise avoidable fatality. At the other extreme, these bedding systems may function to retain too much heat around the body which can also jeopardize the success of the rescue attempt. In order to circumvent these problems, the rescue workers would be required to either add additional layers of insulation over the existing sleeping bag arrangement to stabilize the patient's body temperature or manipulate the fastening assembly on the sleeping bag to allow for more circulation into the interior. It is also not uncommon for rescue personnel to join the patient in the sleeping bag in an effort to better regulate body temperature. If these options cannot be performed in an efficient manner, the health and welfare of the patient is at risk.
A further disadvantage of these approaches is that it is difficult to safely transport the patient, when in the sleeping bag, from one location to another without the need for additional equipment. Accordingly, there remains a need for an improved emergency care blanket which is adapted to adequately protect the patient during a variety of prevailing environmental conditions. There is a further need to provide such an emergency care blanket which allows for easy accessibility to the patient during rescue and which is simplified in construction so as not to interfere with rescue efforts.